Once bitten, twice Steve Ovett. Before the 1980 Moscow Olympics Ovett said: "I have a 90% chance of winning the 1500m." Having won the 800m several metres clear of Seb Coe he upgraded his prediction. Not only would he definitely win, he said, but he would top the world record he had just set by several seconds. In the end it was a slow race – "It really is a jog," said David Coleman – that Ovett misjudged, never getting ahead of Coe who kicked magnificently in the final 60 metres to claim gold. Ovett had to settle for bronze, never having caught up with Jürgen Straub either. Did he learn? Did he heck. A week later he competed in the 5,000m at Crystal Palace, coming out of the back straight close on Bill McChesney's shoulder, with John Treacy pushing hard to stay on his tail. "Two hundred metres to go and one feels that there's only one man with a killer threat there," says Ron Pickering, whom you can almost hear leaning back in his seat. Ovett feels the same, apparently, and gives a little wave to the crowd as he comes past McChesney. Treacy's legs whirr faster at the very sight. "Steve's got to run!" yelps Pickering, as Ovett stretches out a few feet. But he almost immediately slows down again and, as he lifts his arms to celebrate at the line, Treacy charges forward, head down, to pip him to first place. "And Treacy may have stolen it! He might just have stolen it!" Pickering whoops. "In which case Steve has only got himself to blame." GT

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that Brazil are going to find a monumentally farcical way not to win next summer's World Cup: a 94th-minute own-goal from Neymar in the final against Uruguay, say, or Luis Suárez scoring a handball winner from an offside position. Something like that. Something traumatic. It doesn't matter how impressive they were in beating Spain 3-0 in the Confederations Cup final last month. This has nothing to do with being rational and everything to do with the scars left by Brazil's failure to win the World Cup when they last hosted the tournament in 1950, the memory of losing the trophy to Uruguay still enough to make a Brazilian's bottom lip go wobbly.

Brazil needed only to avoid defeat to become the world champions for the first time but the intense build-up to the match at the Maracanã hardly seemed to set them at ease. For instance, on the morning of the game the Brazilian newspaper O Mundo did Uruguay's team-talk for them by printing a picture of the Brazil team under the headline "These are the world champions". No pressure, lads! But just so you know, everyone's counting on you. But no pressure! Go out there and enjoy yourselves!

"Obdulio Varela, Uruguay's captain, saw the newspaper on display at the newsstand in his hotel on the morning of the final, and was so enraged that he bought every copy they had, took them back to his room, laid them out on his bathroom floor and encouraged his team-mates to urinate on them," Jonathan Wilson wrote in 2010. Uruguay won 2-1 and the rest, as they say, is very upsetting history for supporters of the Seleção.

O Mundo's blunder should have been a cautionary tale but some people never learn and before Germany's semi-final against Italy at Euro 2012 the German tabloid Bild printed a cover of the Italian side in formation on the plane home. "We wish them a good journey home," the paper trumpeted. Fate duly tempted, Mario Balotelli scored twice as Italy sent Germany on their way. Sadly there was no word on how they lined up on the journey home.

Fabio Capello could also point the finger of blame at the media after England's disastrous showing at the last World Cup. When the draw was made in December 2009 and England were placed in a seemingly easy group with Algeria, Slovenia and the USA, the mood in the country was so buoyant – so dangerously and unwisely buoyant – that the Sun's front page carried the triumphant headline E(ngland)-A(lgeria)-S(lovenia)-Y(anks) below the message "Phew! World Cup relief". Elsewhere it hailed "THE BEST ENGLISH GROUP SINCE THE BEATLES". All fun, knockabout stuff and fairly amusing at the time but the Sun made one crucial mistake: it forgot that England are England and England are bad at football. Bloody media. JS

Somebody was going to come out of the ring looking a bit of a fool. Marco Antonio Barrera had promised to give Prince Naseem Hamed the fight of his life and, just in case anybody was struggling to picture the scene, had commissioned an oil painting of him standing over Hamed, prone on the canvas, to hang in his parents' living room. "I am going to knock him out," Barrera said, "and then I will raise above him the flag of my country." As you would expect, Hamed had a few things to say himself, in the days building up to the fight. A sample:

"I am ready to dismantle Barrera. I will be utterly devastating. This is the defining moment in both our careers. It will be a great fight while it lasts; perhaps one of the biggest fights of the 21st century. But good as he is, Barrera does not have the power, the ability, the speed or even the heart to beat me. He's tailor-made for me and I will fit him a suit to wear on the canvas."

As it – ah, no, he's not finished.

"I am about to be fulfilled. The world will be watching to see who is the best featherweight of all and I have this smile on my face because I know the answer already. People think they hear the same old stuff from me but I am certain I am going to win easily, convincingly and definitely by a knockout. I can see me destroying him early on and it is going to be in devastating fashion. I don't just want to win, I want to send shock waves through the boxing world. I want them to know why people talk about me as the hardest pound-for-pound puncher in the world. So I am planning the most devastating knockout of my career. It is as important to win in style as it is just to win."

On the – oops, sorry, on you go.

"I'm not thinking about decisions. I'm going out there from the first bell and I am planning on throwing some unbelievably hard shots. I have prepared for anything and everything. I am in unbelievable shape. Whatever happens, I am going to find a solution and a victory. Even if he comes out of the sky at me, I have prepared for it. Even if the whole building collapses, when the dust settles, I will be standing there with the rubble all around me, holding my hands above my head" – now there's an oil painting – "I am planning the biggest, most devastating knockout that I have ever taken anybody out with. I'm waiting to dispose of him and take him out. I haven't come to Vegas for nothing. I plan to destroy somebody. I haven't come to Vegas for the first time to pit-a-pat."

Hamed also made a point of discussing how much he had prepared for this boxing match. His record was 35-0 but he had become less consistent, less fearsome and the chitter-chatter about how well managed his career had been would not go away. As Frank Haynes put it, in the Daily Record, the match-up with Barrera was supposed to "crush ideas that his professional life has been a flamboyant trick of smoke, mirrors and clever selection of opponents without a truly testing challenge". Not that the Prince let that detract from his entrance (the bar for which had been set by the magic carpet that delivered him upon Vuyani Bungu the year before). Having delayed the start of the fight to have his fists re-bandaged twice, he finally appeared suspended on a circus swing, leopard skin to match his shorts, with fireworks fizzing around the MGM Grand as tickertape fluttered to the ground.

Barrera was cannier than Hamed had given him credit for, though, and had the Sheffield boxer staggering by the fourth round – not by piling in, as Hamed had expected, but by waiting and counter-punching. Hamed's one-beast-of-a-punch'll-do-it strategy was making him more vulnerable. Still he pushed out his chin at Barrera, taunting him. "Barrera's response to Hamed's typical showboating was simple but effective," said the Daily Mail's Jeff Powell. "He kept hitting him in the head." After 12 rounds the judges produced a unanimous decision that, at 115-112, was actually rather generous. Even Hamed said Barrera had "clearly" won the bout. "But I will be back," he promised, channelling Muhammad Ali, post-Frazier. He did return to the ring once more, an underwhelming win over Manual Calvo just over a year later, but the fight that was to define his career also, essentially, ended it. GT

When the former Mets and Phillies legend Lenny Dykstra retired, he went into the luxury business. He was a three-time All Star, a World Series champion in 1986 and the winner of the Silver Slugger Award in 1993 – a hard-bitten player known as Nails, spitting tobacco and living life to the full off the field (to such a degree he drunkenly drove into a tree in 1991 and missed two months of the season).

He ended his playing career in 1998, then went into business, going into the stock market and making a pile – something he was unafraid of showing off, bragging about his $60m fortune and pointing out that people who invested with him in 2008 "made 250-large". He bought up the hockey legend Wayne Gretzky's $18.5m LA mansion, swanned around in a Rolls Royce Phantom and flew a private jet. For fun he would go to "wealth parties". Unbelievably, given what was to come, he even wrote a financial advice column for the investment website TheStreet.

Hubris was just biding her time. By 2009 he was living in his car. He had filed for bankruptcy, owing between £10m and £50m. The GQ article alleged credit card fraud and failure to pay bills, while an ESPN investigation suggested "a series of lawsuits that stretched from coast to coast". He owed money everywhere, some of it in eye-watering amounts. The Gretzky estate – one which he once bragged was studded with fountains and flatscreen TVs – had water damage, torn-up floorboards and missing toilets. In the bankruptcy papers it was found to be "littered throughout with empty beer bottles, trash, dog faeces and urine and other unmentionables" while a drain leaked raw sewage into the place. His second home was riddled with mould. He was forced to sell his 1986 World Series ring to help pay his debts and was found to have lied under oath, hidden assets and acted "fraudulently and deceitfully". On top of which he was arrested for grand theft auto, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, identity theft, bankruptcy fraud, possession of cocaine, ecstasy, a syringe and human growth hormones. He was banged up for three years after prosecutors dropped 21 charges against him in return for pleading no contest to the grand theft auto charges, including a concurrent six-and-a-half-month sentence for the bankruptcy issues. He was released in June but still faces 500 hours of community service and a $200,000 restitution bill for his efforts.

Alongside all of which was a grubby side story in which he was charged with two counts of indecent exposure after allegedly exposing himself to women he solicited on Craigslist – he would apparently tell them it was a "massage job" then disrobe. Meanwhile his former housekeeper claimed he forced her to give him oral sex every Saturday too, something he denied by saying: "This is a maid. That's not even worth commenting on. Are you kidding me?" Oh, and just to round things off, in 2007 he was named in the Mitchell Report into illegal steroid use in the Major League Baseball.

Back at the start of his career, Dykstra had been a minor league team-mate of the Moneyball star and Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane, who wrote: "He was able to instantly forget any failure and draw strength from every success. He had no concept of failure." He may do so now. TB

Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery. There is a wickedly amusing account on Twitter, @PseudoFed, which plays on Roger Federer's lack of humbleness, especially in defeat, and it is said that he is not especially amused by it or that he knows who his tormentor is. It has also been hinted that some of his fellow players do and several of them, including Andy Murray and Tomas Berdych, follow the account and maybe that is what hurts Federer most: that people close to him can see him in it. After all an insult really hits home only if the victim suspects it is grounded in truth.

For some people Federer is the epitome of a gentleman, as graceful off the court as one of his piercing forehand winners. Others take a different view. They think that he is a construct, that the veil can slip a little too easily when he feels the heat, and that just because you are better does not mean you have to tell everyone you are better. We know, we can see, we have eyes, we saw you lift your 17 trophies – you don't have to tell us. Really, you don't. We do know, you know.

Manchester United fans tell people they are not arrogant, just better, and maybe that's true. Or maybe you can't be better without being arrogant. It is the paradox of the genius. They are admired for their gifts, which makes people want them to win because people want to see them do it again and again, and people want them to lose because arrogance – or self-confidence, which can manifest itself in many different ways – makes people uneasy.

There is nothing wrong with believing you are special. There is not even anything wrong with wanting to crush opponents who you think should not really be allowed to share the same court as you. It was less appealing, though, when that creeping sense that Roger had fallen for Roger took hold, first when he started walking on to Centre Court at Wimbledon in that preposterous blazer, and it became even more evident when his number of Wimbledon titles were scrawled on his trainers.

Perhaps it is merely an attempt to add to the aura, as if Federer was strutting about the place like the Harry Enfield character, putting on a West Midlands accent and saying "Oy am considerably betta than yiaow". This year he walked on to Centre Court for his first-round match against Victor Hanescu with '7' on the back of his trainers. Two days later, as he walked back to the locker room after losing in the second round to Sergiy Stakhovsky, the world No116, it was hard not to conclude that he had been asking for it. JS

When Ian Wright put Arsenal 2-1 up against Bolton in September 1997 and broke Cliff Bastin's goalscoring record for the club, it was not only a moment of ecstasy for the striker but one of considerable relief too. As he gambolled around Highbury his Arsenal shirt whipped over his head to reveal a T-shirt with the message "179 Just Done It", he surely thought back to that embarrassing moment five minutes earlier when he scored the equaliser, equalling Bastin's record in the process, got his maths wrong and made the big reveal a goal too soon. If he had never scored for Arsenal again, it would have been hard for Wright ever to live it down but he got away with it and ended up with 185 goals for the club.

Jermain Defoe, though, did not enjoy similar luck with a similar stunt when the Tottenham striker was after his 100th Premier League goal two years ago. To be fair, it was reasonable enough to assume that he would reach the landmark in a home game against Avram Grant's hapless West Ham side in March but because Tottenham's kit is white, it was possible to see that he was wearing a T-shirt underneath with the message "100 goals" and Defoe spent most of an entertaining 0-0 draw spurning chances that had not been so much edged with gilt as marinated in the stuff. Defoe got there in the end but it took him more than a month to reach his century. Now we are not necessarily saying it is wrong to wear that sort of T-shirt like that, even if it is a bit brash. No striker worth his salt gets anywhere without self-belief. But just be aware of the consequences if your kit is white. Come prepared. Wear an extra layer. You'll regret it otherwise. JS